Imagine an internet where helpful software partners keep working after you log off. They pay your bills, book flights, or balance a city’s power grid without taking coffee breaks. Economists say these autonomous agents could unlock trillions of dollars by 2030. Yet the current web, run by a few giant platforms, wasn’t built for programs that must trust, pay, and check one another’s work. NEAR Protocol, a fast public blockchain, wants to fix that. It offers the open road where human users and AI agents can travel safely together.
1. A New Internet of Autonomous Agents
Autonomous agents are small computer programs that decide and act with little help from people. Think of a trading bot that moves money while you sleep, or a voice assistant that orders groceries on its own. The idea of billions of such helpers is called the Agentic Web.
2. Why Today’s Web Holds Them Back
Traditional “Web2” platforms like Google or Amazon keep data behind private gates. That hurts agents in five ways:
Data Silos. Valuable information stays in separate corners of the internet, hard to reach.
No Shared Identity. One agent can’t easily prove it should be trusted by another.
Slow or Costly Payments. Tiny, frequent transfers face bank fees and delays.
Low Transparency. It is tough to verify that an agent really did its job.
Security Risks. Central servers invite hackers and unwanted snooping.
To welcome agents, we need an open foundation where rules are baked into the system rather than enforced by any single company.
3. Blockchain to the Rescue and Why NEAR Shines
A blockchain is a public ledger that anyone can inspect but no one can secretly change. Agents from many creators can meet there, trade value, and leave a clear record. Early blockchains, however, were slow and pricey. NEAR Protocol was built to remove those limits.
4. NEAR’s AI Roots
NEAR was built for AI from day 1.
It might surprise you, but NEAR Protocol’s origins are deeply tied to AI. NEAR was founded in 2017 by Illia Polosukhin and Alex Skidanov – both of whom came from the world of advanced computing and AI research. Illia was actually a co-author of Google’s landmark 2017 paper “Attention Is All You Need” (which introduced the Transformer architecture at the heart of modern AI models like GPT). Alex was a former Microsoft and MemSQL engineer and an ICPC programming champion, with a knack for building scalable systems. The two originally started a project called NEAR.ai with the goal of using AI to write code (a field known as program synthesis). They amassed a dataset of 30,000+ programming problems with millions of solutions to train AI, pushing the boundaries of having machines generate software.
When they moved into blockchains, they kept their focus on massive scale and automation.
5. How NEAR Stays Fast and User Friendly
NEAR Feature
Simple Meaning
Why Agents Care
Sharding
The ledger is split into parallel lanes, so many computers process transactions at once.
Keeps fees tiny (often less than one cent) and confirmations under a second even during heavy traffic.
Readable Accounts
Wallet names look like alice.near instead of long codes.
Easier for both people and programs to map a name to a service.
Fine-Grained Keys
One account can hand out limited keys. Example: “trade this token up to fifty dollars per day.”
Lets you give an AI agent narrow powers without risking your whole balance.
Asynchronous Calls
Programs on different lanes can message each other without waiting.
Supports complex tasks that need many steps at once.
6. Building Blocks Made for AI
NEAR Intents. A user or agent states what it wants, like “Swap one hundred USDC for the best price in BTC.” Competing solvers plan and complete the job in a single secure transaction. Agents write one instruction instead of ten manual steps.
Chain Signatures. A NEAR account can control addresses on blockchains such as Bitcoin or Ethereum through a shared signing service. Agents get one home base yet can act anywhere, without risky bridges.
Confidential Computing. Secure hardware enclaves let smart contracts crunch encrypted data and then prove they followed the rules. A hospital could ask an AI to study scans without exposing raw patient files. Learn with NEAR AI, Phala and XTrace.
Built-In Micropayments. Everything on NEAR is token-based, so an AI model can charge fractions of a cent for each query and get paid instantly. Small developers can earn money without big middlemen.
7. Looking Ahead
As software agents grow smarter, people will ask, “Can we trust them?” A public ledger answers with math, not promises. NEAR’s mix of speed, low cost, cross-chain reach, and privacy tools makes it a real contender for that trust layer. Whether it becomes the universal hub is still unknown, but its AI-first design gives it a head start.
Takeaway
The Agentic Web could bring hands-free services and huge economic gains, but it needs neutral ground where countless agents can meet, trade, and prove they did their work. NEAR Protocol offers that ground. If autonomous agents are indeed the next big thing, a platform like NEAR may be what lets them cooperate safely—and lets the rest of us enjoy the benefits.
Reflective Questions
Which NEAR feature (sharding, intents, chain signatures, or confidential computing) strikes you as most important for autonomous agents, and why?
How might user-friendly account names change everyday use of blockchain apps?
Can you think of a task you handle today that a trustworthy software agent on NEAR could manage for you?
What privacy worries might appear when agents process sensitive data, and how could confidential computing address them?